07/10 - We arrive at Sipidan Water village on Mabul island, all of our accomodation is built directly on the sea, wooden chalets built on stilts and connected by walkways. The room is massive, with a gorgeous balcony and our own private sunloungers looking directly out to the sea and over the coral...little fishes are swimming outside!!

The diving here is world renowned, and not suprisingly most people at the resort are divers, hardly any beginners here either. A real mix of people - lots of japanese, dutch, american, italians. A few people on their honeymoon.

The resort takes you out for the boat dives a day starting at 5-15am (the best time of the day to dive!), and there is unlimited diving at the house reef. We spend every day going over to Sipidan Island for the amazing diving there

. It is mostly walls and dropoffs with some slopes. Quite alot of currents, big schools of fish along with loads of turtles and sharks. The highlight of the dive was clinging onto the rocks in strong currents watching thousands of barracuda form massive torandoes, which seemed bottomless swirling around and around! We saw so many white tip, black tip and the odd grey shark we lost count, same goes for the turtles. Big schools of bumphead parrotfish and bat fish too!

Later on we chilled inthebar with the rest of the divers, comparing stories, drinking cocktails and watching the dive video...If you dont like diving you would probably hate it here.

Jess was staying on the other side of the island, so we went across to visit her one night. The island was actually quite poor, the locals really smiley and friendly though. Jess popped over to our side of the island to say goodbye, watch our dive video and sup chi-chi cocktails, then Andrew walked her home and got lost!

As the holiday nears an end, im actually quite sad, 3 months of travelling - over so fast, however this has been the perfect relaxing end to the trip.Sydney here we come...